12.21 Solstice at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects

December 11, 2023

12.21 SOLSTICE

Essay in Artists Quarantined with Their Art, Hyperallergic June 20th 2020

June 4, 2020

Artists Quarantine With Their Art Collections

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Interview with Erica Hess for the podcast I like Your Work

June 4, 2020

https://www.ilikeyourworkpodcast.com/post/artist-susanna-coffey-painting-identity-teaching-experiences-supporting-artists

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Sangram Majumdar Interviews Susanna Coffey

June 4, 2020

https://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2019/12/susanna-coffey-a-life-in-the-studio.html

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In Her Studio at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects

June 4, 2020

In Her Studio

Night Painting October 4 – 30, 2019 at Alpha Gallery

October 15, 2019

Susanna Coffey Night Painting October 4 – 30, 2019 Reception for the Artist Friday, October 4, 6 – 8 p.m. Conversation and book signing with the artist and Brice Brown (publisher, MAB Books) in honor of the publication of Susanna Coffey: Night Painting Saturday, October 5, 4 p.m. Alpha Gallery 460C Harrison Avenue Boston, MA  02118 617.536.4465 info@alphagallery.com www.alphagallery.com Image: Milton Gas Station, from the Brown Joint Portico 1/24/19, 2019, oil on panel, 6 x 9 inches Susanna Coffey is perhaps best known for her self-portraits that explore identity, guise and the examination of the self.  However, concurrent with this pursuit has been Coffey’s interest in landscape painting and particularly the landscape at night.  Working on an intimate scale (most of them are around 6 x 8 inches) Coffey captures the beautiful shapes and colors that are “revealed” in darkness. Inspired by a painting in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, Jean-Francois Millet’s Starry Night (ca. 1850-65), Coffey’s first attempts were executed in the countryside of Vermont.  She would go on to include urban scenes of Chicago (where she taught at the School of the Art Institute for many years), New York City (where she maintains a studio), suburban Connecticut, and wherever her travels took her.  Natural and artificial light sources serve as reference points – moonlight on a field or a brightly illuminated gas station seen through a thicket, for example.  But these paintings are not so much about place as they are about meeting the challenge to recalibrate perception, to coax out the world from darkness and, in Coffey’s own words to “paint a landscape that has no green trees.” In April 2019 Susanna Coffey: Night Paintings was published by MAB Books with an essay by publisher Brice Brown.  Brown suggests that in these works “Coffey is imploring the viewer to hold strong, be present in the moment, and try to revel in the strange, confusing, powerful thing that is life.”  And Coffey herself states that “the paintings are watching life, and in some way, prolonging it, holding onto it, transforming it so it stays a little longer.”  These powerful and enchanting paintings are life experiences, small enough to hold in your hand. Susanna Coffey’s work is included in the collections of the Yale University Art Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hood Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Karamay Museum of Art, Xinjian, China, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Seville, Spain, among many others. This is her fifth solo exhibition at Alpha Gallery.

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Carol Becker on Susanna Coffey’s Night Paintings, published in conjunction with the hardcover book “Night Paintings”

July 15, 2019

Carol Becker

Night Painting

At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly colored than the day….If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance….It is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky.

(Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Wilhelmina van Gogh, 16 September, 1888)

Humans are not well adapted to the night. Owls, possums, coyotes, bats, leopards, lemurs, beavers, badgers, skunks, red foxes, wombats, among other mammals, have sensorial adaptations that make them most comfortable, even enlivened, by the dark. They might sleep all day, but they anticipate the night. Some have echolocation (bio sonar) and experience the world sonically, bouncing back to them. Others have eyes that pierce the darkness like lasers. Many are hunters—it makes sense to hunt when prey is most vulnerable—and explorers.

There are some humans who also become most alive at night. Many writers, artists, singers, and musicians prefer the night, relishing the time when no one is awake and, there is abundant psychic space in which to dream. Still, whatever their Circadian rhythms, humans create best where there is some light. Night painting, therefore, is a strange practice—privileging, as it does, the darkness over the light, attempting to break through its opacity. What motivates an artist to paint in the dark, perhaps in unknown terrain, lighting her way with a lamp attached to her head?

Susanna Coffey’s nocturnal landscapes are the results of such excursions. They are miniature windows into a sleeping world, where the door is left a bit ajar to allow only the slightest illumination to pierce through. These paintings make the viewer work. In focusing on these images, we replicate the adjustment the eye must make when we enter darkness. At first, we are unable to see anything at all—so dependent are we on the existence of light. But as we spend more time without light, our eyes slowly begin to adapt. And it is possible that more than our eyes adjust. Perhaps all our senses realign as we become more at home in the night.

This process of acclimation is also how we observe these paintings. The content is hidden at first, but the details reveal themselves over time. The longer we focus on them, the more their subtleties emerge. As this adjustment occurs, we begin to locate ourselves in space. We see the light in the darkness. Small windows and street lamps slowly animate the landscapes. Trees that before merged into dense clustered backgrounds begin to articulate themselves. As the lights of the paintings turn on, they splash their surroundings with illumination and small universes emerge, gradually familiarizing us with the terrain, pulling us in. Excited by what we now are able to observe, we find abstraction giving way to recognition.

We then marvel at how comfortable we have become in the dark, how safe it feels to roam, how rich is the environment heretofore hidden. Moving beyond disorientation, adapting to these locations, collecting bits of information, we too become creatures of the night. Satisfied with such observations, we realize that we have become adept at decoding these small, very precise landscapes, as if learning to navigate a recurring dream.

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Dreamhouse Vs. Punk House (plus Cat house) at Serious Topics

May 26, 2019

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PARENT PORTRAITS at WESTBETH May 11 – June 8, 2019

May 26, 2019

Show Dates:
May 11 – June 8, 2019

Opening reception
Saturday, May 11, 2019, 4-8 PM
Closing reception
Saturday, June 8, 2019, 5-7 PM

FOR SPECIAL EVENTS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS EXHIBITION, SEE BELOW

At Westbeth Gallery, 57 Bethune Street, NY, NY 10014
Gallery hours: Wednesday – Sunday 1-6 PM, or by appointment.

Westbeth Galleryis pleased to present Parent Portraits, an exhibition focusing on artists’ representations of their parents, curated by artists Robert Bunkin and Jenny Tango. The exhibition will offer works by these contemporary international artists working in diverse media, including painting, sculpture, drawing, intaglio printmaking, and embroidery:

Participating Artists:

Sigmund Abeles, Ken Aptekar, Anneli Arms, Joan Banach, Isabel Barber,
Brian Brooks, Robert Bunkin,Susanna Coffey, William Crist, Patricia Dahlman,
Harvey Dinnerstein, Elise Dodeles, Jenny Dubnau, Richard Estrin, Donna Festa,
Leonid Gervits, Dan Gheno, Susan Grabel, Amaya Gurpide,
Patrick Earl Hammie, Mark Hanson, Melanie Hickerson, Jayne Holsinger,
Sedrick Huckaby, Sara Issakharian, Karen Kaapcke, Catherine Kehoe, Brian Kreydatus,
Mel Leipzig, Beverly McIver, Marybeth McKenzie, Ron Milewicz, John Mitchell,
Arnold Mesches, Bill Murphy, Danielle Muzina, Jennifer Pochinski,
Carolyn Pyfrom, James Rauchman, Joseph Santore, Elinore Schnurr,
Ryan Schroeder, Frances Siegel, Orly Shiv, Jenny Tango, Polly Thayer,
Audrey Ushenko, Clarissa Payne Uvegi, Costa Vavagiakis, Jerome Witkin.

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Yard at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects May 8 – June 16, 2019

May 26, 2019

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